Monday, September 19, 2016
Send in the Clowns
Coulrophobia, the irrational fear of clowns, has been enjoying a surge of popularity thanks to a wave of "menacing clown" reports (here, and here) across the US. A pessimist would view this mask from the Shoggoth Assembly as doubly creepy- it's a clown, and a skinned human face. An optimist would see an inspiring trophy
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Clowns are at best creepy and their grotesque visages inspire feeling of the uncanny, which can be considered one of the flavors of horror. The slash mouth clown motif that has become a staple of the visual horror industry for years can be traced backward a considerable distance.
You might want to check out the 1928 movie starring Conrad Veidt, The Man Who Laughs, which is based on the Victor Hugo book of the same name, L’Homme qui rit in the original French (1869). Both the book and movie was inspiration for The Joker in the Batman comic books, first appearing in April 1940.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Laughs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Laughs_(film) list of film versions
the ’28 version can be seen on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWr_benB_QA and on Archive.org https://archive.org/details/TheManWhoLaughs1928
and the book can be downloaded https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12587
as an audio book https://archive.org/details/man_who_laughs_1205_librivox
for a bit of fun http://weirdfictionreview.com/2015/02/conversation-uncanny/
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